It is becoming increasingly desirable to reduce the power consumption of devices, including computing devices. Where the devices are battery powered, reducing power consumption is beneficial because it increases battery life; however, even where devices are mains powered, a reduction in power consumption has environmental benefits and reduces running costs.
There are a number of approaches which have been developed to reduce the power consumption of computing devices. One approach is to power down the display after a defined period of inactivity and another approach is to put the computing device itself into a low power mode (e.g. by shutting down or suspending the device) when it is not being used. A further approach is to use a reduced power mode when a battery operated device is not connected to mains electricity, e.g. by reducing the brightness of the display.
The embodiments described below are not limited to implementations which solve any or all of the disadvantages of known techniques for reducing the power consumption of computing devices.